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1.23.2015

I kind of like being unconventional, unpredictable, and coloring just a little outside the lines.

However, at the same time, I hate not having some semblance of a schedule, not having an outfit picked out, or having deviled eggs completely turn on me.

I'm a unique soul that embraces both chaos and calm. I like having a blog centered around baking and pretty scones, until I feel like trying something new and photographing something I actually ate for lunch. I really hope you don't think that I live on cookies and braided nutella bread. I mean, that'd be pretty cool, but we wouldn't have a sweet world if there wasn't a bit of savory involved.

I mean, have I ever told you how much I love pickles? Seriously. And a good salsa? Salt, I need salt in my life. And not just salted caramel.

That being said, can we please talk about how I am seem to have really strange issues with eggs? Poached, deviled, boiled, pan-fried. Sometimes even scrambled isn't safe from me. The yolk gets too done, the whites fall apart in simmering water, scrambled bits get tiny and dry, and what are supposed to be picturesque deviled eggs won't peel without taking half of the egg with it.

And don't think I haven't done my research, and please don't think I'm also entirely incapable of cooking an egg. I'm actually not all that bad, but when you go through certain traumatic eggsperiences (hahahahhaaaaaa couldn't not), they kinda leave a thorn in your side.

So, if you're looking for the perfectly peeled egg and the solution to all of your deviled problems, go away and go here instead. That's next on my to-try list.

But, if you're looking for a sympathetic soul that will give you something to do with a dozen shithead little eggs, I'm your girl.

Basically what I'm telling you to do is to chop those eggs to bits, dice and fry some bacon, and throw them both in a bowl. After all the egg-chipping you've done, I swear that tossing your mutilated eggs with some seriously aromatic bacon will do wonders for you.

From here on out I made an egg salad loosely based on this. Mustard, paprika, pimentos, radishes, onions, sriracha, and a bunch of other stuff is getting tossed in. Nothing is safe in the path of egg fury and improvisation.

Feel free to disregard measurements and just go for what looks right to you. That's my basic mantra in just about all things involving the word 'salad.'

This is where coloring outside the lines starts to look more delicious.

From here you're on your own. I went for the cheddar, romaine, extra radish and sriracha route on a simple whole wheat sandwich bread.

But the other night I also went for avocado slices and onion bread. Seriously, the ways to dress this salad up are endless.

Also, I'll be nice to you and add in what seems to be a more reliable method of egg boiling. Because hard-to-peel eggs aren't fun even if you don't care about the end appearance. Good luck!

Slice and commence face stuffing. Forget about those perfectly smooth eggs with their little bacon bit toppings. Just forget it, because you got a week's worth of meals out of an appetizer.

Also, crinkly wax paper and baker's twine, because you and your lunch break are worth it.

12 eggs (It's best not to boil eggs the same day they are purchased. 7-10 day old eggs are preferred.)

6 pieces thick-cut bacon

2-3 tablespoons mayonnaise

3-4 tablespoons yellow mustard

2 teaspoons paprika

2 tablespoons pimentos

3 tablespoons diced radishes

3 tablespoons grated onion

a few dashes of hot sauce

Salt and pepper

Whatever else strikes your fancy

Directions:

Place your raw eggs in a large saucepan or dutch oven. Add cold water until all eggs are fully submerged, meaning there's at least 2 inches of water sitting on top of them. Add 1 tablespoon of salt. Place the pot over high heat until it reaches a boil. Turn off heat, cover the pot, and let it sit for 13 minutes. At the tail-end of 13 minutes, dump a bunch of ice into a large bowl and add some cold water to create an ice bath.

While the eggs are cooking, dice the uncooked bacon. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat, then add the bacon and cook until crisp. Remove to a paper towel-lined plate to cool.

After exactly 13 minutes, remove the eggs from the pan and place them in the ice bath. Let sit for 5 minutes. Carefully remove one egg at a time and crack the eggs shell (making sure the majority of the shell is cracked). Gently begin removing the shell. The ice-water bath should "shock" the membrane in between the egg white and the egg shell, loosening the shell and allowing you to peel it off in nearly one piece. Or it might not and you're wondering what you did wrong. Just power on and chip your eggs, trying to salvage as much of the egg as you can.

When all the eggs are peeled, remove to a cutting board and proceed to cut them into bite-size chunks. Add these chunks to a medium bowl and toss together with the bacon bits. Proceed to dump in the mayonnaise, mustard, paprika, pimentos, radishes, grated onion, and hot sauce. Toss together, adding a bit more mustard and mayonnaise as you go if you find it to be too dry. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Go light on the salt and really taste it as you go, since you've already got some salty mustard and pimento action going on.

That's it! You have a salad. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week. Some suggestions: apply liberally to sandwich bread, make into a hearty wrap, or stick it on an english muffin and broil it. The possibilities are endless.

1.18.2015

Guess what! It only took me three years, but I finally got around to photographing these delightful citrus-y triangles of goodness again.

In case you feel like you're missing something, let me just show you the stellar first photographs:

Aw yeaaa such skills.
In the old post, I tried to get all scientific and experimented with double the amount of grapefruit, creating one soggy scone as you'll see on the right. These were also the days when I still felt the need to mass bake everything I made, forgetting that we didn't really live in a full house of teenage girls anymore. So I would double things, sometimes triple, and then think twice and put my freezer to good use.

These light, fluffy, honey-sweetened and sugar-topped scones are a January sort of dream come true. We're in the middle of winter and we want flaky, buttery scones. We want the tang of Greek yogurt and the sweetness of raw honey, we want all the bright little citrus segments, we want the grapefruit sugar topping by the spoonful, we want doughnuts and cinnamon rolls, we want hearty chowders and cheesy breads, we want something other than Netflix and half-hearted reading materials, we really really want a job.
I mean..at least I do.
Applications on applications on applications.

Ahem, anyway. Let's address the process real quick. A whole Ruby Red is zested, and then it is peeled and segmented to get out the little gems of fruit. The zest is rubbed together with granulated sugar to create a wildly aromatic topping for our unbaked scones. Now, let it be known that I was using some rather old grapefruits here and a dull zester that's at least 30 years old.

Investing in a Microplane has never seemed like such a good idea. Grandma's tools have served me very well, but really, some things just have to go.

Some cold butter and dry ingredient cutting action going on here. See that nice, coarse texture? Those little chunks of floured butter are our flaky scone factor, treat them gently. To this mixture we add the honey, yogurt, and grapefruit segments in an attempt to moisten this dryness. I've also subbed sour cream for the yogurt with lovely results.

With a lightly floured surface and some gentle kneading, we incorporate the moisture throughout the dough and get rid of any stubborn dry bits. Then we pat our dough into a circle, and cut into 6 equal slices.

I'm out of parchment paper, so I just greased these rustic ol' baking sheets (also my Grandma's, ha). Finally our lovely zest-y sugar is put to use and is distributed evenly amongst our scones. It might seem like too much, it's definitely not.

Bake to just the right amount of golden brown, the centers should be just firmed but still slightly soft as well.

These are best after they've cooled straight from the oven for about 10 minutes. You can top them with jellies and jams and butters and spreads, but they're pretty dang perfect as is.
Onwards and forwards, there are more pretty pictures yet to take and fluffy scones to make. And employment, lots of employment. Please.

Grapefruit Honey Yogurt SconesYield: 6 sconesIngredients:

6 tbsp. unsalted butter, cold

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Ruby Red grapefruit

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tbsp. honey

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

Directions:Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Dice cold butter into small chunks and set aside in the fridge to keep chilled. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Zest the grapefruit and combine zest and granulated sugar on a clean
cutting board. Rub together the zest and sugar with the back of a spoon
or a plastic bench knife until very well combined, the sugar will be tinted a pale orange color
and smell like grapefruit (Unless of course you're using a crappy zester and old grapefruit, in which you might not get the pretty orange color, whatevah). Measure 2 tablespoons of the grapefruit sugar
and whisk into the dry ingredients. Save the remaining grapefruit
sugar for topping the scones just before baking.
Next, segment the grapefruit. Slice off the bottom and top of the
grapefruit, exposing the wheel of grapefruit flesh inside. Use a sharp
knife to cut away the peel and pith of the grapefruit, exposing the pink
grapefruit flesh. Slice in between the white skin segments to the
center of the fruit, at a slight angle, circling the grapefruit. Little
grapefruit segments should fall from their skin as you slice. Set
segments aside.
Take the diced, cold butter out of the fridge and add to the dry ingredients.
Using your fingers or a pastry blender, break the butter down into the
flour mixture until butter chunks are the size of oat flakes or small
peas. The butter and flour combined will resemble a coarse meal. Add the
honey, plain yogurt, and grapefruit segments. Toss together with a fork
until all of the dry ingredients are moistened by the yogurt and
honey.
Turn the scone dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently to further distribute the moisture and bring the dough together. Pat into an 8
inch circle, about 1 inch thick. The dough will seem quite dense and sticky, that's just right (sprinkle lightly with flour if necessary, to make it easier to work with). Use a knife or a bench scraper to cut
the dough into six triangles. Place on the prepared baking
sheet. Sprinkle generously with the remaining grapefruit sugar.
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until golden brown on top and firm but soft in the center. Allow to cool on the pan for 10 minutes before serving.
These scones are best served warm and/or the day
they’re made.Sources: barely adapted from Joy the Baker

1.07.2015

Raise your hand if you've been freaking out about the New Year and reading Joy's post has made you feel a tiny bit better. The Best of Intentions for 2015, goshdang I love that woman.

Maybe another 365 days shouldn't feel so daunting, but seriously, they do. They really do. Which is why you have to do the whole one day at a time mantra, cuz otherwise it's all just too much. Maybe you've started doing the oil cleansing method and your face-skin is royally freaking out at this sudden adjustment. Maybe you've been dabbling in the world of liquid eyeliner and perfecting your cat eye. Maybe you've taken up yoga and grounded yourself from shopping and excessive gas use-age until one of these job interviews actually works out for you. Maybe you've been doing a lot of official writing for things like school applications (heaven forbid) and you just need a good paragraph or two of letting your brain explode.

Until then...there's gooey cinnamon squares. I definitely treated myself by going out on a limb and buying Smitten Kitchen's book. And I definitely spent over two hours of New Year's Eve reading the dang thing.

But what's happening here is monumental. It's fantastic. It's the most beautiful collision of gooey and underbaked and cakey and cinnamony. Deb really hit the freakin nail on the head here, I can't get over it. I just can't.

WHYARE PEOPLE SUCH GENIUSES. *as I eat mashed potatoes and cheer on the Gilmore Girls*

Basically this is a mashup of gooey butter cake and a snickerdoodle. It's all things wonderful.

On a side note, I've come to terms that this gas oven of mine is basically just a mutant that does whatever it wants with what you put into it. Pizza, bars, scones, and god forbid, meringue. It doesn't seem to matter the position of the oven racks or whether or not you monitor the temperature because it just like to mess with you.

What I'm trying to say is that somehow my gooey layer ended up sinking to the bottom, and the cake stayed on top, with the cinnamon swirling itself throughout. By all means that's fine with me, but it's just not how other people's seemed to turn out. Just something to keep in mind, but either way the end product is bound to be delicious.

I'm going to hammer one thing into your brain real quick and then we can be done with this increasingly scatter-brained post.

Nooooo overbaking. None.

These bars need to come out browned around the edges with a crisp cinnamon layer, but the gooey layer has to stay gooey. This will make it appear to be under-baked, you'll think it can't possibly be done in the middle! Just remove it from the oven and walk away. It firms up as it cools, I pinky promise.

Here's that picture again of what it should look like:

Fresh from the oven. Browned edges. Crisp cinnamon layer where it didn't manage to leak through the dough and wreak havoc on my perfectionist vision of neat layers. Major gooeyness. Just let it happen.

Oh, and I ate at least half of the pan. I'm not even going to try to make that sound cute.

Happy New somethin'.

Gooey Cinnamon Squares

Yield: one 8x8 inch pan, about sixteen 2-inch squares

Ingredients for the cookie layer:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 large egg*

2 tablespoons milk (probably should use whole, but I got away with skim)

Ingredients for the gooey layer:

2 tablespoons light corn syrup or golden syrup

2 tablespoons whole milk or heavy cream

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup + 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 large egg*

1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons flour

Ingredients for the cinnamon sugar:

2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

A pinch of freshly-grated nutmeg, if you wish

*I halved the original recipe, hence the awkward egg-halving. Simply crack a large egg into a small bowl, whisk it together, and then pour half into the cookie layer and save the other half for the gooey layer. Easy-peasy.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line an 8x8-inch baking pan with parchment paper with a 2-inch overhang. Grease the parchment paper with room temp butter or cooking spray.

For the cookie layer, in a large bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a bowl with a hand-held mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium high speed until pale and creamy. Add the 1/2 egg and milk. Add the flour mixture on low speed and mix until just combined. Put the mixture in the cake pan in dollops (it’s too thick to spread if you add it all in the same place), and spread it into an even layer with an offset spatula.

For the gooey layer, in a small bowl, whisk together the corn syrup, milk, and vanilla. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a bowl with a hand-held mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium high speed until pale and creamy. Add the other 1/2 egg, mixing until incorporated, followed by the salt. Add the flour in three additions, alternating with the milk mixture, starting and ending with the flour. Dollop the batter over the unbaked cookie layer and spread evenly.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar and ground cinnamon to make the topping. Sprinkle evenly over the batter. Bake until the edges are golden brown, the cinnamon is crisp, but the gooey layer is still quite gooey and under-baked looking, 25-30 minutes. The gooey layer won't set until the squares have cooled completely.

Let cool, then slice into 2-inch squares. Store in an air-tight container at room temperature.